The motion below was agreed at a meeting of Liverpool Against the Cuts (LATC) on 10 December. LATC is an organisaton that has met more or less every month in Liverpool for about 3 years.
It main aim is to fight austerity and has concentrated on the attacks made by Labour’s Liverpool City Council on services: cuts, privatisation, sackings.
Many workers, men and women and students have attended LATC and continue to do so because with the sustained government attack and the complicity of Labour, the City Council may cease to exist within five years.
Recently the attacks have been on outsourcing or closing 11 libraries, closing down or cutting mental health services, selling parks to private developers, sacking 100s of council workers, while using private companies who exploit workers through zero-hour contracts.
However, a first real victory came when the council reversed their plane and announced a U-turn: No libraries were going to be shut. Labour claimed their worked behind the scenes to make this possible! However, it is impossible to find a worker who agrees with them. The victory of Old Swan Against the Cuts (OSAC), LATC and other community groups has changed the mood in Liverpool, and people now realise it is possible to fight and win.
Old Swan Against the Cuts decided to propose the motion because everyone in OSAC thought it was high time to try to unite all the struggles to increase the fight and mobilisations against the cuts and also to discuss standing against the parties of austerity in the general and local elections in May. During two meetings it was amended 8 times. The proposer of the motion is also a member of the ISL and will stand as an OSAC candidate for councillor.
SP and SWP against the motion
At the LATC meeting, two members of the Socialist Party (CWI) and the Socialist Workers Party, on behalf of TUSC, moved a different motion. TUSC (Trade Union and Socialist Coalition) is an umbrella party that appears only in elections, formed by both parties with the RMT (transport workers union) leaders.
They are also calling a conference, but no word about fighting austerity and uniting the Liverpool communities groups to defeat Labour’s policy of collaboration with the Tory government. All they defended is a conference to be for entirely discussing the elections and announcing TUSC candidates, some time in March or April (the polling day will be early May).
The form of the conference would be to invite the Union’s leadership linked to the Labour Party and this very austerity party to speak and then debate. That means a class collaboration conference that would tie the activists who are beginning to play an independent role in the city, both from the Labour and the bureaucratic Union’s leaders.
But not even the candidates will be freely elected at the conference. At the LATC meeting the TUSC started to announce their candidates for the election before any workers meeting took place. The conference will only be a “show” to ratify candidates previously chosen by a few.
For class independence and organization from below
Although both motions were approved, OSAC’s motion got a broad majority of votes and only two against. SP/SWP/TUSC’s motion had the opposition of all the fighting groups at the meeting. TUSC was politically defeated in the meeting.
This happened because their position aims only at emphasising and organising for the elections. They did not actively support the campaign over the libraries, they did not get their members to raise support in union branches. As stated by one of the activists who attended the LATC meeting, they are never seen in the day to day struggles, except when they came to the demonstrations called by LATC and OSAC.
We have started to organise an open and democratic committee and intend to hold the LATC conference in February. At the conference in addition to building a programme to unite the ongoing struggles, candidates who support this democratic programme from below can be elected.
We invite all to participate in the OSAC/LATC conference.
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Motion from Old Swan Against the Cuts for Liverpool Against the Cuts meeting 10 December
We continue to oppose all the cuts in local services: adult social care, support for mental health, children’s centres, swimming pools. We oppose any attempt to privatise public areas such as the parks.
There should be no deterioration but improvement of all current library services, maintenance of the infrastructure and day to day running to ensure no cuts and no staff lose. No to a programme of death by a 1,000 cuts because of starvation of funds.
Now it’s time to take Liverpool from the grasp of those who support austerity: the Tories, Labour, Lib Dem or UKIP, and give the city back to the people. With this purpose we will be standing in the elections in May 2015 and call on all groups fighting the cuts to do the same.
We ask Liverpool Against The Cuts to work with all anti-cuts groups to call a conference to deepen the fights against the cuts and to encourage anti-cuts groups to stand in the elections on a social and political struggle basis.
· No to privatisation of libraries! No volunteer run libraries! Keep all libraries public!
· No reduction of opening hours. No loss of staff.
· End all zero hour and precarious contracts
· Against cuts in any local service what so ever
· Defend all council and public services.
· Restore the benefits safety net
· End all benefit sanctions and cuts
